Finish Every Time

Cyril C. House
Mass Communication and Popular Culture
14/02/2016

Finish Every Time

Introduction

  "That's what" (She). Today's generation is vastly freer to assert themselves than ever before, and one of the results of such freedom is the inevitable expression of repressed sexuality. This comes out in many forms, from the more mature expressions seen in the influx of openly-LGBTTIQQ2SA-persons, across the spectrum to the less mature expressions seen in the wry humour of today’s youth, a prime example is seen in the quotation above. These forms of sexual expression are duly noted by the Cultural Production Industry. The Cultural Protection Industry takes this knowledge and wields it as an ammunition of advertisement. In plain cases this means the Sunshine Girl in the Edmonton Sun newspaper, drawing many consumers to purchase the paper for little other reason than to view the Sunshine Girl of the week. There are also more obscure cases, such as the popular Rihanna song Work (DirectLyrics). To a surface listener the lyrics depict a girl who is frustrated with her boyfriend because he is failing to respect her emotions. To a critical ear however, the truth comes out that, this girl is frustrated with her boyfriend but she is frustrated because he is failing to satisfy her sexually. Halfway through the song she meets Drake, and Drake starts rapping about how he intends to fulfill the need that her boyfriend cannot. I am certain you can think of several examples where you have been listening to a song and thought ‘that sounds extremely erotic, I wonder if that is intentional’. Popular Culture is rife with sexuality in advertisements, and even the most seemingly-harmless product-ads carry with them a deeper, darker, sexier side which is intended to appeal to your desire to express yourself sexually. Within this paper I will be taking a peek at one such ad, and pointing out the attributes and components of it which are intended to communicate with the sexuality of the consumer. 

Theoretical Framework

  The study of meaning-making and meaningful communication is known as semiotics. Semiotics was catalyzed by Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist, during his time as an instructor at the University of Paris.  Saussure dies in 1913, two years before the birth of his successor: Roland Barthes. Barthes took the study and application of semiotics and popularized it, writing several books and even publishing a series of essays known as “Mythology of the Month” in the popular magazine Les Lettres Nouvelles (Seiler). 

  Saussure and Barthes studied signs and symbol systems. A language is a type of symbol system, in which the symbols of coloured marks on a page have a systematic meaning, which we call words or sentences. A sign is the cumulative product of a Signifier plus a Signified. When we look at images of kittens, the image of the kitten is the Signifier, it is a physical representation of some-thing. The feelings or thoughts which one has when looking at the image of the kitten, this is the Signified, it is a mental representation of some-thing. A Signifier and Signified, together, comprise a Sign. Two more terms which one should be familiar with to understand the following are: Metaphor and Metonymy. A metaphor is what occurs when there is a disjunction between the signifier and signified, so the signifier Fist can signify Power metaphorically. Not dissimilarly, a metonym is when a signifier represents only part of a larger whole but it is intended to symbolize that whole regardless. Seiler gives the apt example: “the sign of a mother pouring out a particular breakfast cereal for her children is a metonym of all her maternal activities of cooking, cleaning, and so on, but a metaphor for the love and the security she provides.”

Analysis

  When looking at the Duracell ad pictured above a number of things popped into my mind, and after a little unpacking I came to see that there was a logical, linear process of how such thoughts ‘appeared’. As I am sure you are aware, Duracell is a brand of batteries which pride themselves on the ability to ‘keep going, and going, and going’. As it turns out, perhaps not surprisingly, the Duracell brand is the primary signifier here. The ad is for a small, portable power bank to charge your phone with when you are away from an outlet or your charger, but in fact the ad acts to metonymically promote the entire line of battery products, and in fact it better promotes the other battery products than the power bank itself. The second signifier that came to my attention was the heading at the top of the phone display: “Some things shouldn’t end before the end” and I had this shockingly immediate signified representation of a vibrator being powered by some brand of battery less inclined to ‘keep going, and going, and going’, and again as a footing: ‘repower your smartphone with a portable USB charger, and finish every time”; this latter claim has strong implications not just of self-pleasure devices but also of portable pornography which becomes further reinforced by the half-text “Downloaded 99%’. My original assumption was strongly reinforced as I continued to critique this advertisement. A particularly sneaky bit of metaphoric signage in the ad is the dark room just slightly lit by this powered device, again signaling to the consumer a little battery-powered fun in the solitude of darkness.  

  As an individual with a particularly strong ‘conspiracy-radar’ if you will, the second I saw a major corporation advertising with a sluice  of small, nearly unreadable text all positioned in plain sight, my mind was screaming “subliminal messaging!”. The couple points we considered in the previous paragraph were indeed subliminal in the purest sense of the term. This paragraph will be dedicated to the strong signifier/signified which are, not really, all too well hidden. The middle of the phone is riddled with half-finished text messages meant to indicate the dire situations one might find oneself in should one choose not to purchase the Duracell power bank. There are a couple images in the fray as well, most noticeably there is a picture of a box standing in for the word ‘box’ in the half sentence: “Life is like a box of…” In this case the half-sentence is less interesting than the picture itself. The box could be called a metaphor, although I am not sure it is cleverly-enough disguised to warrant such a term because ‘box’ in the street slang of the present-day is an extremely common euphemism for vagina. Some more explicit ‘half-texts’ which will bring sex to the forefront of the mind are “Stick it all the way up his…”, “She’s bleeding from her…”, and “Nobody does it like…”. Now if I, as a common consumer, were to finish these sentences (as I autonomously do), they would read “Stick it all the way up his ass”, “She’s bleeding from her vagina”, and “Nobody does it like you”. Now we have a bit of a disjunction within these three ‘full-texts’, “Stick it all the way up his ass” is explicitly vivid and readily brings forth the signified images of vibrators (in correlation with my argument) and/or other erotic utensils. Skipping ahead to “Nobody does it like you”, this is a much more implicit-implication of sexuality because ‘it’ could be anything, and for many, or perhaps most, people this statement alone would signify myriad other ‘its’ before it signified anything sexual; but taken in correspondence with the rest of the ad’s signifiers, the ‘it’ in this case is arguably a self-pleasure apparatus. If I may recall the example from my introduction about Rihanna’s boyfriend not being able to get her off, and so Drake comes along to assist her; and maybe nobody does do it like Drake, but that is a matter of debate. What is less complex of a discussion topic is the opinion that nobody does it like themselves, bringing us back to the imagery of electronic stimulation devices. Now, the true, seeming, dislocation in our three full-text examples comes with the phrase “She’s bleeding from her vagina”, because there is very little to get excited about when a woman is bleeding in such ways, regardless of the (natural or not) nature of the ailment. However, in a subliminal context there is something to get excited about here, being the word ‘vagina’. Although the phrase in its entirety seems to detract from the erotic ambience of the ad, it is not the entirety in which it is intended to be taken. The word ‘vagina’ is all that the brain is intended to take in because, bleeding or not, any image of a vagina will evoke some semblance of sexuality, and it is this semblance of sexuality which serves the greater purpose of reinforcing the overall message of the ad itself.

Conclusion

  It could be argued that this ad, taken in the context which I have, so vividly, provided is aimed at the typical male-heterosexual-consumer as it is using the signified imagery of masturbating females to promote the Duracell brand, and it does so quite effectively. However, whether intentionally or not, this advertisement is quite effective at targeting the entire consumer spectrum. Hetero-males for the above described reason, hetero-females who desire to finish every time, like Rihanna, and it also appeals to the rest of the population perhaps best captured in the LGBTTIQQ2SA acronym, because of the very plain fact that society attempts to suppress the open expression of sexuality from its subjects, and the natural reaction to such suppression/oppression is to rebel. While the societal controls imposed on obvious forms of sexual rebellion remain in the indoctrinated ‘taboo-range’ of the common citizen, what is not in the taboo-range is buying batteries for any and all battery-powered devices, and when deciding on a brand these people will now choose Duracell; not because they are cognizant of the underlying messages within this ad and intentionally set out to rebel against society, but because their subconscious tells them Duracell is a good brand, because the subconscious recognizes that it feels good to rebel/ it feels good to express oneself sexually/ it feels good to unconsciously experience freedom from sexual oppression, and these good feelings are transmitted to the conscious mind in logical/ non-taboo/ non-offensive messages, something along the lines of: “these batteries have a lot of juice”, “they last longer so I will spend less on batteries”; and these messages are taken in and accepted all while the subconscious mind is screaming in delight. The morality of the advertising tactics examined herein are at best uncertain, but the effectiveness of such techniques is proven. Whether any given person chooses to buy Duracell over the no-name battery brands is meaningless, the important take-away is that Duracell is one of the primary brands of battery which come to mind when asked about batteries, or when thinking about batteries. Duracell’s sales may fluctuate throughout the years, but their notoriety as the brand ‘that doesn’t quit’ will certainly remain a constant.

Works Cited

Rihanna. “Work”. Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group. 18/02/2016. Web. URL = http://www.directlyrics.com/drake-rihanna-work-lyrics.html

Paris, Ogilvy & Mather. “Duracell Batteries: "Some Things Shouldn’t End Before The End" Print Ad”. Coloribus. Web. URL = http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/prints/duracell-batteries-some-things-shouldnt-end-before-the-end-15906005/

Seiler, Robert M. “Semiology // Semiotics”. University of Calgary, n.d. 18/02/2016. Web. URL = http://people.ucalgary.ca/~rseiler/semiolog.htm

She. Justin Wishne, Bryan Nicolas. “That’s What She Said: The Most Versatile Joke on Earth”. Penguin Books Ltd: New York, 2011. Print.